For many applications, virtual reality is the simulation of a real environment. Utilizing virtual reality may be useful for television productions due to a desire for re-creating and replaying various scenes of live events.
Various popular products are available in the marketplace for creating virtual reality effects on personal computers. However, they are limited in creating virtual reality based on real events.
When creating a simulated environment associated with a real event, various physical data may be collected to increase the realism of the simulated environment. For example, a virtual simulation may model a real event such as auto racing. In order to create a virtual race track with virtual race cars, knowing the physical parameters associated with real race cars racing on a real race track may be helpful.
Typical television sport event coverage includes many video cameras covering different parts of the event. Some auto racing events have as many as 20 video cameras covering the race track and are capable of providing a viewpoint from many different directions.
To produce a television program of a live event such as auto racing, a large amount of manual input is typically required to create a television program displaying real scenes captured by one of the real cameras and virtual scenes rendered by a processor.